WORK MOTIVATION:BARRIERS & STRATEGIES

Dr. D. Dutta Roy, Ph.D.
Psychology Research Unit
Indian Statistical Institute
203, B.T. Road
Kolkata - 700 035
India

DEFINITION

Work motivation is a process to energize employee to the work goal through a specific path.

Process	This is not an object rather method or technique or art
Energize	Developing inner urge to put effort on successful performance.
Employee	Person employed to exchange his cognitive, affective and conative domains for achievement of organizational goal for salary etc. as contracted by the organization.
Work goal	This is well defined, achievable and measurable
Path	Specific roles and job responsibilities are measurable and related to goal achievement.

BARRIERS OF WORK MOTIVATION

Attitude to employees	Considering employee as cog of the machine rather as a human system having unique needs, abilities, personality traits, values, aptitudes, skills etc.
Work Goal	Undefined, unachievable and unmeasurable
Path	Job responsibilities are undefined, unachievable, unmeasurable and unrelated to work goal.
Leadership	Leadership failure in manipulation of incentives.
Third party	Influence of informal communication systems through colleagues, unions and family members.

STRATEGIES TO OVERCOME BARRIERS

Job Analysis More emphasis on personnel specification and regression analysis to determine weightage on job related individual characteristics.

Human resource accounting Accounting IQ, EQ, personality traits, aptitude profiles of each employee.

Selection Selecting right man for right place at the right time.

Attitude change Employee as human system having specific needs, aptitudes, temperament, attitudes towards job and the organization.

Role clarity Well defined job description and work roles. Introduce role drama for role understanding for both lower level employees and the managers.

Training Periodical training to the employees about upgradation of skills, work role analysis and to the leaders about leadership development (communication, manipulation of incentives, decision making etc).

Survey Periodical survey to study level of employee satisfaction , attitude towards organizational health and their relations to individual productivity and quality of working life for organizational diagnosis.. Introduce organization development programmes for attitude change in considering results of regression analysis.

Work culture Introduce quality circle, suggestion box system, and intermingle organization to the life style of the employees.

Above includes summary points of lecture given to the senior executives of the Hindustan Copper Limited, Ghatshila, India and the IIM, Ghatshila chapter by the invitation of Mr. N.K.Gami, Deputy General Manager (Personnel), dated.17.11.2001.

Contact for correspondence : ddroy@isical.ac.in;
ddroy@caltiger.com